This resident is suing KC over his shocking $700 water bill. ‘I don’t have a yacht.’

When Richard Elbert logged in to pay his water bill in July, his account said he owed more than $710.

Elbert — a 65-year-old retiree living alone — didn’t see how he could have possibly used what he said amounted to more than 108,000 gallons of water in one month. He called the city and spoke with several employees and got varying explanations, according to a lawsuit he filed against the city and eight employees this summer.

“I’m a single person,” Elbert said in an interview. “I don’t have a swimming pool. I don’t have a garden. I don’t have a yacht. I don’t have any of these things that use an excessive amount of water.”

Elbert is suing Kansas City over what he claims is negligence in employee training and failure to correctly install water meters — among other issues arising from his billing. His case, now in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, has been referred to mediation.

KC Water said it could not comment because the litigation is pending, but the attorney handling the case for the city has moved to have it dismissed.

In a filing, the city said Elbert failed to prove that a city policy resulted in the failure to train employees and argues the city’s failure has to be on a policy level to be held liable.

The filing says the city “cannot be held liable solely because it employs” someone who infringes on another’s rights.

According to his lawsuit, Elbert’s issues with the water department started in 2012, when he moved into his home. His bills seemed high, but he was told they were in line with an average bill for a single-family residence.

For nearly five years, he paid an average bill of $61.48 until a leak was discovered in the basement where the water meter connects to the plumbing.

When two employees came to inspect it around February 2017, they found the two individuals who initially installed it “had failed to put a gasket on the fitting” and Elbert “had been paying for water ... that was just pouring down the sewer.”

After that fix, Elbert’s bill shrank, he said in the lawsuit. But the water meter was reading no usage and Elbert was underpaying, he says the city told him. From March to December 2017, the lawsuit says his average water bill was about $35 a month.

From January through May this year, Elbert’s bill was about $41.44 a month. Then came the whopping $711.57 bill.

When Elbert called the water department about his exorbitant bill, he was given three different explanations, according to the lawsuit.

▪ He was told that because his meter had been reading no usage since April 2017, he had only been paying for sewer charges, not water usage. He says he was told the meter was repaired in June and the large bill was the sum of all the water he used since April 2017.

▪ In a later conversation with a supervisor, Elbert said he was told that the meter installed prior to March 2017 was not functioning and incorrectly reported his usage. The new meter, he was told, was was functioning correctly. The employee said the billing was accurate and suggested Elbert have a plumber check the home for a leak, according to the lawsuit.

He argues a leak that size would have been impossible to ignore.

“I told them I think I probably would have noticed that about the time I saw my furniture floating down the street,” Elbert said.

▪ In another conversation, the lawsuit says Elbert was told that the wiring connected to the meter reader was not working between March and December 2017 but had been corrected in January.

Elbert had two more calls with two more city employees in July, according to the lawsuit. In one, the employee again gave him the original explanation that his meter didn’t read usage between March and December 2017 but was corrected in December 2017.

The lawsuit requests $15,000 in compensatory damages and $50,000 in punitive damages.

This is not the first lawsuit Elbert has filed against the city; he has attempted to sue multiple times before over issues with the police department.

On the issue of his water bill, he said he wanted to bring the issue to people’s attention because he’s not the only one experiencing such problems.

“It’s just not fair,” he said. “It’s just not fair.”